Monday, March 24, 2008

Barely An Experience

Today I had a near-death experience and it was when I almost died from a heart attack about something I thought was happening but wasn't, after all. Truly. I was walking toward my house. I live on the end of a stretch of apartment buildings. Picture it:

You're walking along. Suddenly you hear a torrent of firetrucks approaching your address. You look at the side of your building which is covered in gray. You see a group of people huddled near your apartment. Suddenly you see smoke billowing out of your apartment covering the whole facade of the building. Your heart literally seizes and you think frantically, "WHAT did i leave on?!? I have just destroyed all of our possessions and ruined our nice landlord's building! I burned the foundation! The whole thing's gonna come dooowwwwn!!!!"

You say aloud, "Oh.. my.. GOSH" and start running even though that clearly it's too late, that everything must already be completely destroyed and you are doomed.

Only to stop short 2.3 seconds later after realizing that a) the side of the building was always gray, and there was no smoke. Not ever. As convinced as you were, your eyes were honest-to-goodness just playing tricks on you. The firetrucks turned down a street instead of coming to your door. The "crowd" is actually one man standing at a bus stop 25 yards away from your house. All is well. What the hey just happened??